Talk:Relational aggression/Archive 1

Old comment
I added external links and a summaries of what seems to be balanced here. For all those people who research this topic please weigh in. (Note: I used 'sex' versus 'gender' here because 'gender' is code word that some (self-described-Stalinist) 'gender' feminists use to push their agendas. Please use terms here accepted by both men and women so some sort of consensus is possible because there is much debate about many basic gender-feminist assumptions) I hope to see this article include all known forms of relational aggression in all possible settings with distinct distinctions that separate other forms of aggression from relational aggression. Anacapa 06:17, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Slight error in the last revision?
Also known (now in 2006) as covert bullying, social aggression, male bullying, female bullying, or family bullying it is a cruel, cunning, and covert form of aggression.

Is male bullying really a synonym for relational aggression? I think male bullying usually referes to other forms of aggression. Maybe delete both male and female bullying if want to avoid mentioning only female bullying.


 * no as far as I know no one in the research setting uses male bullying in to label relational aggression algthough men do indeed indulge in relational aggression as well. I deleted 'male bullying' and changed female to 'female' to prevent perjorative meanings.


 * I had to delete "male bullying" as well just now. While "female bullying" is used in the citations as a synonym for relational aggression, not only have I not seen "male bullying" as a synonym for relational aggression, I've seen it many times used as an antonym.  .  Wikipedia is not a primary or secondary source, it is a tertiary source, and relies on compiling the usage of these terms as they are in fact used in the literature.  In my work with male and female victims of all types of abuse I've seen relational aggression used by men and women, and used against men and women, however, that is irrelevant to the point at hand.  --Joe Decker 07:08, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Rewrite Thoughts
The best definitions I can find (e.g., http://jea.sagepub.com/cgi/content/short/24/3/303 ) start off by describign what relationship aggression is outside of it's (alleged, but perhaps true) most common occurance in school-age female children. This seems a possibly productive way to begin writing a better article for relational aggression, then proceeding to talk about the sorts of places where it's commonly seen.

The existing article also seems to focus, quite a bit, on male/female differences. That information is important, but I'd like to see it be cohesive and citation-based, right now it feels a bit off-the-cuff, which is great for a stub (hey, we've got an article at all!), but not what I'd like to eventually see. --Joe Decker 08:43, 31 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Joe, please glance at the other links on this article especially the UK Bullies in the Family link. I think you will notice that adults use relational aggression too.  I want to make sure we don't blame school kids for something that adults do and model to kids.  The focus on male female differences is, I believe, important as Relational Aggression is a preferred form of aggression for females since it uses psychological rather than physical violence.  However, I am concerned that people refrain from steoreotyping all females or all males.  Obviously some females can and do commit physical aggression and some males can and do commit psychological aggression.  As for citations I too would like to see much more and broader sourcing here.  I will do what I can as I have time.Anacapa 01:13, 13 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks! Sorry for the delayed reply, I will try and dig up that link.  I've tried to simplify and shorten the statement that relational aggression is not age- or sex-exclusive.  I see some literature as I look today that seems to suggest that there's not really that great a gender difference, e.g., the Project Ophielia FAQ--right now I'm thinking it's appropriate to note that the term "female bullying" is used for that, to note that RA does come from different ages and sexes, and (hopefully) put future work more into providing a better explanation, perhaps with even more examples, of the types of behavior.  I've also tried to source a bunch more of what the article says, and start converting refs over to the ref-tag system.  Comments and criticisms are very welcome.--Joe Decker 19:41, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Family bullying
In the contexts I've researched so far, family bulling doesn't seem to be consistently used to refer to specifically "relational aggression" styles of bullying. If someone can provide a reference that does define it that way, I'll include it, otherwise I'm removing the statement as unsourced. --Joe Decker 18:54, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind, I found such a reference. Will restore it. --Joe Decker 19:42, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Abusive relationship
I'm going to be WP:BOLD and merge this stub into this article. Bearian 00:35, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Confused
I read through this article, and call me stupid, but I still don't have a clear idea of what it's talking about. Maybe some examples would help. User:Zaorish

'A' tells a lie about 'B' behind 'B's' back to 'C' so 'B' becomes seen as a 'bad' girl. shunning is a great example of relational aggression by whole groups against a one a few people. In the Chinese Red Revolution group-shaming was used to such effect that by time the Maoists actually murdered their victims they were often stripped of everything that made them human and their actual murder was merely a sideshow.


 * I've added a couple examples that may help here, in a new paragraph that describes that older kids tend towards more covert styles of RA.--Joe Decker 19:18, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

it's quite important for me to know if relational aggression would lead someone to cause physical harm to others. In the 'warning [sign]' section, it includes 'physical harm of any kind.' Physical harm to whom? Because if this refers to harm inflicted towards others, then this section contradicts the characterization of relational aggression which, mentioned in the intro part, damage caused is on relationships or social status rather than physical violence. Neo3ger (talk) 16:43, 3 April 2010 (UTC)Neo3ger

Female Bullying
As near as I can tell, one or more editors here are understandably trying to establish that relational aggression is not necessarily male or female (which is entirely reasonable), however, in doing so they are taking issue with the arguably sexist language that refers to relational aggression as "female bullying" but not "male bullying". In the last two days I've effectively reverted two such efforts, one an attempt to include the term "male bullying" as a synonym, the other an attempt to redact the term "female bullying". As an additional note, the second such edit was made with a note that the editor would explain their reasoning here on the Talk page, I don't see the reasoning here, so I figured I'd start a section, and start a discussion on the subject.

Let me be clear, Wikipedia is not a place for original research. (see WP:NOR) While this article  needs work and additional specific citations for the words it uses. As per that policy, Wikipedia is a "tertiary" source, statements made in Wikipedia should be verifiable (see WP:V) from reliable sources (WP:RS). The term "female bullying" is commonly used in the literature as a synonym for relational aggression, the term "male bullying" is used as a synonym for something quite different. The citation I have provided on the term "female bullying" in the article introduction is clear (as are other sources) on these usages. That I find the use of those terms somewhat misleading (since of course both forms of bullying are perpetrated by members of both sexes, albeit at different frequencies) is absolutely moot to the question of what terms we should use here. Moreover, I defend the Wikipedia policy not only on the grounds of "the rule is the rule", but on the grounds that, whether I have a problem with it or not, the term "female bullying" is in fact in common usage, it appears in several books and articles studying the general problem of relational aggression, readers looking for information on relational aggression are likely to have heard the term and are going to want citations describing what it means, that is what Wikipedia is for. --Joe Decker 18:26, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

To the anonymous, United Kingdom-based editor who re-added the "male bullying" with a citation to the article at as of 19 February 2007--the article, as I read it, does not include the word "bullying" at all, much less the term "male bullying". Therefore, the citation you gave does not in fact evidence the term "male bullying" as being used synonymously with "relational aggression." However, I have produced references which use the terms, e.g.,. So far I've been working under the belief that you are editing Wikipedia in Good Faith, if you continue to engage in an edit war without discussion you may lead me to believe that your edits are more intentionally destructive. --Joe Decker 22:06, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

--> Do you try to feminize your victims ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.138.119.103 (talk) 02:40, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

"Further reading"
The following were in the "further reading" section. The page does not need a long list of further reading, it needs to be expanded with the sources contained therein. If anyone wants a starting point, here's a good place to do so. Google books also has some previews available. WLU (talk) 20:11, 4 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Books
 * Simmons,Rachel Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls
 * Underwood, Marian K, Social Aggression Among Girls
 * Bennett, Elizabeth Peer Abuse Know More! Bullying From A Psychological Perspective
 * Nixon, Charisse & Dellasega, Cheryl, Girl Wars
 * Academic articles
 * Casas, J.F., Weigel, S.M., Crick, N.R., Ostrov, J.M., Woods, K.E., Jansen Yeh, E.A., Huddleston-Casas, C.A. (2006).  Early parenting and children’s relational and physical aggression in the preschool and home contexts.  Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 27, 209-2227.
 * Crick, N.R. & Grotpeter, J.K (1995). Relational aggression, gender, and social psychological adjustment.  Child Development, 66, 710-722.
 * Crick, N. R., Ostrov, J. F., & Kawabata, Y. (in press).  Relational aggression and gender:  An overview.  Invited chapter to appear in D. J. Flannery, A. Vazsonyi & I. Waldman (Eds.), The Cambridge Handbook of Violent Behavior and Aggression.
 * Crick, N. R., Ostrov, J. M., & Werner, N. E. (2006). A longitudinal study of relational aggression, physical aggression and children’s social-psychological adjustment.  Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 34, 131-142.
 * Ostrov, J. M., Gentile, D. A., & Crick, N. R. (2006). Media Exposure, Aggression and Prosocial Behavior During Early Childhood: A Longitudinal Study.  Social Development, 15, 612-627.

==I would like to expand this page and improve its citing. I would use some of the sources that are mentioned above. In addition, however, I would like to rename this page as a "Relational aggression in adolescence" since it seems that the main topics mentioned at the beginning of the page and the discussion are mostly regarding this specific age period. Therefore, I believe it would be a more appropriate name. I would also like to move the section about abusive relationships to the "Psychological abuse" page since it seems to already discuss this topic anyway (in my opinion, Abusive Relationships can also be a topic on its own and is worth a separate page). Because a somewhat similar page already exists ("Psychological Abuse") and it already covers many of the topics mentioned in this page in greater detail, I would like to focus on the specific kind of relational aggression that happens mostly among adolescents. Vldnr (talk) 11:29, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

new edits
I am starting to make some edits of this page. I might need few days to do so (I'm planning to do only one step at a time), so, please, bare with me for few days until the edits are fully done.Thanks! Vldnr (talk) 22:15, 17 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Looks like you are doing a lot of cool stuff but it overlaps quite a lot with bullying and also victimization. Some of your edits are probably best shifted there or duplicated. In particular the stuff on bystanders etc in bullying needs beefing up.--Penbat (talk) 19:30, 18 December 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks and good point. Because relational aggression is a type of bullying, a lot of the information does kind of overlap, of course, but I tried to pick out mostly the facts that relate to relational aggression specifically and, also, which findings about bullying in general, can be applied to this topic and type of aggression. Therefore, it might be worth duplicating the information rather than just shifting it all there. IN addition, I wanted to give a very throughout description about relational aggression specifically in adolescence period. In fact, I would like to possibly rename the page Relational aggression in adolescence since that would be more accurate, or the name should stay as it is and someone could work on adding information about relational aggression in other age periods and contexts.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vldnr (talk • contribs) 14:27, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
 * just a minor point. punctuation such as full-stop goes before the reference not after.--Penbat (talk) 10:36, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I will fix that. Vldnr (talk) 04:33, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
 * OK now in most cases but please delete superfluous space characters before refs.--Penbat (talk) 08:22, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Misconception regarding victims, and how they are defined as having inferior skills to others
Quote:

Victims

 * Victims or the unpopular withdrawn children are excessively anxious, lack social skills needed to initiate new contacts or break into a group activity.[40] Their lack of confidence combined with submissiveness make them perfect targets for bullying.[41][42] Some of the most common underlying reasons for bullying include low socioeconomic status, disability, and obesity.[43][44][45] Research shows that in comparison with other adolescents victims often use worse problem solving strategies.[46] They often score less than their bullies and defenders in the tests of moral competence and theory of mind.[47] Moral competence refers to the ability to carefully consider both the consequences and prior believes in determining how morally wrong or right or wrong are one’s actions. Victims seemed to focus primarily on the outcomes and not being as good in integrating the moral beliefs. They have difficulties in social skills, and social problem solving, as well as emotional regulation.[48] And because of their lack of social competence, victims score low on peer acceptance and popularity.[49][50] Victims are often overly sensitive to being rejected, which might originate in their relationships with parents.[51] »

The whole section, though soundly based in bibliography, may be biased or speculative. Rejection of normative social influence as a valid means to obtain popularity, or even disregard for social interactions with surrounding children in favour of interaction with adults, is a common trait among gifted children, which makes them targets for bullies. A non-engagement policy is usually followed by such children. However, problem solving skills and moral competence scores are higher than those obtained by their peers (in terms of age). Studies regarding social behaviour of gifted individuals are too new to offer a positive certainty of what I've stated, but I believe the fact they are being conducted deserves at least a mention. Another strategy would be to simply state that the whole subsection refers to a specific stratum of population, and cannot be extrapolated beyond that point; or else to say that the studies are not conclusive since they are lacking evidence. It's not right to offer as a fact something that, at most, can be defined as a label.

Jordissim (talk) 03:37, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Political Bias
This article is whitewashed. Completely censored. Wikipedia is becoming useless. Contributions are removed, the content of the article does not match the citations or referenced material cited in the article.

Several people have included a list of behaviors that have been studied as forms of relational aggression and they have been removed. Several times. Its not worth contributing to wikipedia if people with an ideological agenda intend to censor the article.

We are seeing the decline of wikipedia as it becomes increasingly politicized by ideologies. Examples of relational aggression have been removed. The role of relational aggression in violence has been removed. Gender normativity in relational aggression has been censorsed.

The very definition of relational aggression has been modified in an Orwellian way to mean something completely different than the popular and research literature. This could be an article about bullying.

The article should be deleted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2605:e000:1318:c1d2:149:513a:9a3c:8269 (talk) 11:15, 15 January 2015 (UTC)


 * See WP:BURDEN. Could you provide details (preferably with diffs) of removal of sourced contributions, or now provide suitable sources for unsourced statements that have been removed? Please feel free to ask for assistance with formatting of citations etc. If you are unsure, just give the title of the article or book and the page number here. --Boson (talk) 07:56, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Books and movies on relational agression
I don't have time right now to link the rash of recent books that have come out on this topic such as Queen Bees and Wannabes. However, I will when I can and I suggest an Amazon Books survey to those editors who need a clearer idea about this topic. The movie Mean Girls is I believe a movie about this theme but I haven't seen it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.107.17.146 (talk) 02:59, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Automatic archiving
I propose to add automatic archiving for threads not edited for 90 days. Any objections?--Boson (talk) 08:01, 15 January 2015 (UTC) ✅ --Boson (talk) 21:14, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

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Added a source--Annaaho (talk) 20:47, 3 May 2023 (UTC)annaaho

Added a "see also" section about Suicidal ideation --Annaaho — Preceding undated comment added 20:36, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Added more information to the bystander section and that included three citations --Annaaho — Preceding undated comment added 21:49, 12 June 2023 (UTC)